scholarly journals The public, the protester, and the bill: do legislative agendas respond to public opinion signals?

Author(s):  
Luca Bernardi ◽  
Daniel Bischof ◽  
Ruud Wouters
2012 ◽  
pp. 24-47
Author(s):  
V. Gimpelson ◽  
G. Monusova

Using different cross-country data sets and simple econometric techniques we study public attitudes towards the police. More positive attitudes are more likely to emerge in the countries that have better functioning democratic institutions, less prone to corruption but enjoy more transparent and accountable police activity. This has a stronger impact on the public opinion (trust and attitudes) than objective crime rates or density of policemen. Citizens tend to trust more in those (policemen) with whom they share common values and can have some control over. The latter is a function of democracy. In authoritarian countries — “police states” — this tendency may not work directly. When we move from semi-authoritarian countries to openly authoritarian ones the trust in the police measured by surveys can also rise. As a result, the trust appears to be U-shaped along the quality of government axis. This phenomenon can be explained with two simple facts. First, publicly spread information concerning police activity in authoritarian countries is strongly controlled; second, the police itself is better controlled by authoritarian regimes which are afraid of dangerous (for them) erosion of this institution.


2020 ◽  
pp. 316-328
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Susca

Contemporary communicative platforms welcome and accelerate a socio-anthropological mutation in which public opinion (Habermas, 1995) based on rational individuals and alphabetic culture gives way to a public emotion whose emotion, empathy and sociality are the bases, where it is no longer the reason that directs the senses but the senses that begin to think. The public spheres that are elaborated in this way can only be disjunctive (Appadurai, 2001), since they are motivated by the desire to transgress the identity, political and social boundaries where they have been elevated and restricted. The more the daily life, in its local intension and its global extension, rests on itself and frees itself from projections or infatuations towards transcendent and distant orders, the more the modern territory is shaken by the forces that cross it and pierce it. non-stop. The widespread disobedience characterizing a significant part of the cultural events that take place in cyberspace - dark web, web porn, copyright infringement, trolls, even irreverent ... - reveals the anomic nature of the societal subjectivity that emerges from the point of intersection between technology and naked life. Behind each of these offenses is the affirmation of the obsolescence of the principles on which much of the modern nation-states and their rights have been based. Each situation in which a tribe, cloud, group or network blends in a state of ecstasy or communion around shared communications, symbols and imaginations, all that surrounds it, in material, social or ideological terms, fades away. in the air, being isolated by the power of a bubble that in itself generates culture, rooting, identification: transpolitic to inhabit


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ormston ◽  
John Curtice ◽  
Stephen Hinchliffe ◽  
Anna Marcinkiewicz

Discussion of sectarianism often focuses on evidence purporting to show discriminatory behaviour directed at Catholics or Protestants in Scotland. But attitudes also matter – in sustaining (or preventing) such discriminatory behaviours, and in understanding the nature of the ‘problem of sectarianism’ from the perspective of the Scottish public. This paper uses data from the Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2014. The survey fills a gap in the evidence base by providing robust evidence on what the public actually thinks about sectarianism in modern Scotland. It assesses public beliefs about the extent and nature of sectarianism and its perceived causes. Tensions in public opinion and differences in the attitudes of different sections of Scottish society are explored.


Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Shuhei Hosokawa

Drawing on Karin Bijsterveld’s triple definition of noise as ownership, political responsibility, and causal responsibility, this article traces how modern Japan problematized noise, and how noise represented both the aspirational discourse of Western civilization and the experiential nuisance accompanying rapid changes in living conditions in 1920s Japan. Primarily based on newspaper archives, the analysis will approach the problematic of noise as it was manifested in different ways in the public and private realms. In the public realm, the mid-1920s marked a turning point due to the reconstruction work after the Great Kantô Earthquake (1923) and the spread of the use of radios, phonographs, and loudspeakers. Within a few years, public opinion against noise had been formed by a coalition of journalists, police, the judiciary, engineers, academics, and municipal officials. This section will also address the legal regulation of noise and its failure; because public opinion was “owned” by middle-class (sub)urbanites, factory noises in downtown areas were hardly included in noise abatement discourse. Around 1930, the sounds of radios became a social problem, but the police and the courts hesitated to intervene in a “private” conflict, partly because they valued radio as a tool for encouraging nationalist mobilization and transmitting announcements from above. In sum, this article investigates the diverse contexts in which noise was perceived and interpreted as such, as noise became an integral part of modern life in early 20th-century Japan.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 266-273
Author(s):  
Ivan S. Palitai

The article is devoted to the modern Russian party system. In the first part of the article, the author shows the historical features of the parties formation in Russia and analyzes the reasons for the low turnout in the elections to the State Duma in 2016. According to the author the institutional reasons consist in the fact that the majority of modern political parties show less and less ability to produce new ideas, and the search for meanings is conducted on the basis of the existing, previously proposed sets of options. Parties reduce the topic of self-identification in party rhetoric, narrowing it down to “branded” ideas or focusing on the image of the leader. In addition, the author shows the decrease in the overall political activity of citizens after the 2011 elections, and points out that the legislation amendments led to the reduction of the election campaigns duration and changes in the voting system itself. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the psychological aspects of the party system. The author presents the results of the investigation of images of the parties as well as the results of the population opinion polls, held by the centers of public opinion study. On the basis of this data, the author concludes that according to the public opinion the modern party system is ineffective, and the parties don’t have real political weight, which leads to the decrease of the interest in their activities and confidence in them. The author supposes that all this may be the consequence of the people’s fatigue from the same persons in politics, but at the same time the electorate’s desire to see new participants in political processes is formulated rather vaguely, since, according to the people, this might not bring any positive changes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 06 (09) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
S. Ubeja ◽  
S. Acharya ◽  
P. Jain ◽  
A. Loya ◽  
R. Tiwari

Author(s):  
Admink Admink ◽  
Катерина Гайдукевич

Обґрунтовано, що видовища характеризуються специфічними ознаками, серед яких варто наголосити на культурній цінності, що виявляється у використанні видовищем різних складових культури. Доведено, що видовища є показниками суспільних зрушень у системі цінностей, ідеологій, наявних і латентних проблем, устремлінь та бажань громадськості. Показано, що в сучасній культурі України пріоритетною є функція соціальної регуляції й формування  суспільної думки, яка реалізується у форматі імітативних практик та множинних культурних інтерпретацій. Проаналізовано напрями, за якими розвиватимуться видовища й видовищність в Україні: зміцнення й популяризація традиційних видовищних заходів; усталення нових видовищних практик; збагачення видовищної культури інноваційними формами та практиками. It is substantiated that the spectacle is characterized by specific features, among which it is worth emphasizing the cultural value that is expressed in the use by the spectacle of different components of the culture. It has been proved that the spectacles are indicators of social shifts in the system of values, ideologies, existing and latent problems, aspirations and desires of the public. It is shown that in the contemporary culture of Ukraine the priority is the function of the social regulation and the formation of the public opinion that is implemented in the format of imitative practices and multiple cultural interpretations. The directions for development of the spectacles and entertainment in Ukraine are analyzed: strengthening and promoting traditional entertainment events; establishing new entertaining practices; the enrichment of the spectacular culture with innovative forms and practices.


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